'Bump keys' sold online may open your door to anyone

Chances are, your home's front door is vulnerable to a crime that can be accomplished by a novice: lock-bumping.

With a specially cut "bump key" and the well-timed whack of a hammer, someone can surreptitiously enter your home and leave no obvious sign of a break-in.

The bump key, used legitimately by locksmiths for decades, is designed to momentarily force upward the internal pins that secure the lock, freeing the lock to turn just as if the correct key were used."Most of the locks out there can be bumped," said Tim Hill, a Boynton Beach locksmith who owns All Keyed Up. "There are people out there making these bump keys and shipping them all over the country."

For as little as $3, a bump key can now be ordered online from numerous Web sites offering what many say is nothing more than a burglary tool.

"I would say it's frustrating for me [as a law enforcement officer]," said Sgt. John Bonafair of the Boynton Beach Police Department's community action team. "I don't like to see that kind of thing, it really has no business on the Internet."

The growing online lock-bumping phenomenon has made such an impact that some top lock manufacturers have dedicated sections of their Web sites to the topic. They tout their most sophisticated (and often more expensive) locks as "bump-resistant."

"A motivated individual with some time and very little skill can learn to 'bump' open most conventional locks with relative ease," one lock manufacturer's Web site warns.

Although some online videos portray lock-bumping as a basic undertaking, some say it's not that simple.

"They don't show the other 200 times that they're sitting there whacking at the door trying to make it work," Bonafair said.

Davie locksmith Ron Welter agrees. He says lock-bumping is probably only easy if the homeowner has an older lock that has not been serviced recently.

"Bad people are going to get in whether they're bumping a lock or breaking a window," said Welter, who owns Welters Locksmith.

But when Hill showed a South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter the lock-bumping technique, it took only three tries to successfully bump open a lock on a Boynton Beach business.

Ed Dezic, owner of that business, The UPS Store in Quantum Village in Boynton Beach, said a neighbor told him about bump keys some time ago, but he did not realize some of his older locks were vulnerable until Hill described the technique to him. Dezic decided to upgrade his store's locks."I don't think the public is as knowledgeable about this as they should be," Dezic said. "I'm sitting here now wondering what to do about my house."

So far, police in South Florida say they don't think lock bumpers have been behind home burglaries in Broward or Palm Beach counties. But it's difficult to tell whether a bump key has been used because it doesn't leave behind typical evidence of a burglary, such as a pried door or a broken window.

"I'm not saying it's not here, but we haven't seen it," said Detective Sgt. Al Moreno of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. "You rarely see guys breaking in through the front door of a house."

Far more common, police say, are break-ins through a rear sliding-glass door.

Here's what crime prevention experts recommend for your front door:

• Deadbolts that extend at least an inch when locked.

• A lock with multi-layered locking mechanisms, such as a sidebar that prevents the plug from rotating.

• A burglar alarm.

• A second lock, to make it more time-consuming to bump.

• A slide lock, used while you're home, to back up your main lock.

Consider consulting a reputable locksmith on whether your existing lock is secure, as it could be retrofitted or upgraded to a brand that has proven effective against lock-bumping.

A higher-quality and more expensive lock is worth the investment, Bonafair said.

"With everything that you ever worked for in your house, it's worth it to spend a little extra money to get a quality lock on your house," he said. "Sure, that won't stop a person from smashing your window, but it will prevent people that have some knowledge from going in. They'll look at it and say, 'I'm not going to mess with that one,' and move on."

Members of the lock industry, including the Associated Locksmiths of America, have appealed to the postmaster general to crack down on the mailing of bump keys, arguing that they should be considered burglary tools.

A state legislative bill that would have made it a first-degree misdemeanor for people other than licensed locksmiths to possess a bump key died during the session that just ended. That bill, which would have regulated the locksmith industry in Florida, also would have made it a felony to possess any type of locksmithing tool with the intent to commit burglary.